Personalised medicine (PM) represents a paradigm shift away from a ‘one size fits all’ approach to the treatment and care of patients with a particular condition, to one which uses emergent approaches in particular technological areas such as diagnostic tests, functional genomic technologies, molecular pathways (etc.) to better manage patients’ health and to target therapies. Nowadays the challenge for national and regional authorities is to enable the shift from a REACTIVE healthcare system (based on episodic and acute care model) to a PREVENTIVE (stratifying at-risk individuals and ensure that preventive action is taken to intervene well before the onset of symptoms, let alone illness) and PREDICTIVE (leverage and integrate cutting-edge technologies to not only stratify risk, but even predict risk and intervene even further upstream) system – the so called Personalised Health (PH). In the face of this potential huge leap forward, the fact that personalised health lacks the cooperation and coordination needed to organise the still very fragmented field is a severe drawback to its development and to the placement of investments in an effective manner. For this reason, it is crucial to direct major efforts towards coordinating and aligning relevant stakeholders in personalised health action across Europe and beyond; create a participatory approach; build trust; enable a multi-stakeholder process; channel investments towards Personalised Health. All this considered, Regions4PerMed will coordinate regional policies and innovation programmes in Personalised Medicine and Personalised Health to accelerate the deployment of PH for citizens and patients. The project will reinforce the cooperation between H 2020 and ESIF on PH aspects; Strengthen industrial specialisation areas in Europe and allow PH to flourish as an Emerging Industry; Enable interregional joint investment on PH, including a stable link with Vanguard Initiative and with the European Innovation Council.

TARGET will initiate institutional change in seven gender equality innovating institutions (GEIIs) in the Mediterranean basin – including research performing organisations (RPOs), research funding organisations (RFOs) and a network of universities. TARGET takes a reflexive approach which goes beyond the formal adoption of a gender equality plan by emphasising an iterative reflection of progress made as well as establishing a community of practice to effect institutional transformation. Actual change is the result of increased institutional willingness and capacity to identify, reflect on and address gender bias in a sustained way. Starting point and anchor of the process is a tailored Gender Equality Plan or Strategy (GEP/GES) in each GEII. TARGET will build the institutional capacity for a reflexive gender equality policy by: developing effective tools for each stage of the GEP/GES (audit, planning, implementation, monitoring, self-assessment) to be customised to the specific institution; supporting the development of competences to conduct a gender audit, to design, implement, monitor and self-assess a tailored GEP/GES; establishing a community of practice of relevant stakeholders within each GEII; initiating an organisational learning process within each GEII which combines self-assessment with GEP/GES evaluation. The TARGET countries have been characterised as relatively inactive in developing gender equality policies in R&I. To ensure that action taken has a multiplier effect, each GEII will undertake targeted dissemination activities to initiate a national/regional discourse on gender equality in R&I. Furthermore TARGET will develop new knowledge for institutions, practitioners and policymakers based on a comparative analysis of GEP implementation and sustainability to provide a basis for effective sharing of practice in both proactive and relatively inactive countries - taking into account differences in cultural, socio-economic and political settings.

Building on the Horizon 2020 project GENDERACTION, the overall goal of GENDERACTIONplus is to contribute to the coordination of gender equality and inclusiveness objectives of the new European Research Area through the development of a policy community of practice consisting of national authorities from 11 MS and 2 AC and 7 MS Associated partners and an RFO community of practice from 8 MS and 2 AC and 9 Associated partners. The coordination network covers a total of 23 MS and 3 AC with 26 project partners and 18 Associated partners. Specifically, the project aims to: 1) Develop strategic policy advice on existing and emerging policy solutions in the key thematic areas (intersectionality and inclusiveness; gender-based violence; gender dimension in research, innovation and teaching; monitoring and evaluation of ERA gender equality actions; supporting institutional change through gender equality plans); 2) Enhance the policy-making process through engaging with stakeholders, CSOs and citizens; 3) Build capacities, competence and expertise for gender equality and mainstreaming in R&I among the policy and RFO community members, with special attention to countries with a less comprehensive policy; 4) Create impact through communication, dissemination and exploitation, including national impact plans and an EU impact plan, policy briefs and position papers based on the policy advice developed. The impact of GENDERACTIONplus will be: 1) Advanced policy coordination among MS and AC and through stakeholder and citizen engagement; 2) Improved research careers and working conditions in European R&I, by developing policy dialogue and solutions on inclusion and intersectionality, combating gender-based violence and promoting institutional changes through GEPs; 3) Increased research quality and social responsibility of knowledge through the integration of gender dimension in R&I; and 4) Reduced geographic inequality by targeting less experienced/engaged countries and regions.

In the past 90 years since their discovery, antibiotics have saved millions of lives from bacterial diseases. However, emerging resistance to antimicrobials now threatens many advances achieved in modern medicine. AMR is a critical global health issue tightly linked with the One Health concept, which recognises that human and animal health are inextricably linked, and that diseases are transmitted from humans to animals and vice versa. One Health also encompasses the environment as another link between humans and animals and a potential source and reservoir of AMR. Antimicrobial resistance is a growing global health concern and threatens the future treatment and health of humans and animals. In addition, AMR limits our ability to achieve several of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The global challenge to address AMR goes beyond the production of new antibiotics and therapies. Reducing demand for new antibiotics through public awareness, infection prevention and control, prudent and rational use of antibiotics for humans and animals, as well as effective diagnosis and surveillance of antibiotic-resistant infections and monitoring antibiotic use, are crucial when dealing with this problem globally. The transmission and spread of AMR in and between One Health compartments is complex, which emphasises the need for comprehensive interventions to reverse the trend of increasing human and animal infections resistant to treatment. The ERA-NET Cofund JPIAMR-ACTION will tackle this central challenge by supporting research and innovation for the development and testing of strategies and methodologies to reduce the transmission and spread of AMR within a full One Health spectrum. The JPIAMR-ACTION co-funded call and other activities will be instrumental in producing new innovative approaches, and advancing existing actions towards the development of new and improved interventions to inhibit or limit the development of AMR in humans, animals and the environment.

Cancer is a worldwide health burden and represents a major public health challenge in Europe. It is responsible for 25% of all deaths, being the second most common cause of death after cardio-vascular diseases and the main cause of mortality among people aged 45–64. Today, an estimated 9 million individuals in Europe live with cancer (Globocan 2008, http://globocan.iarc.fr/). Cancer became a chronic disease which contributed substantially to the growth of medical expenditures and constitutes a major socio-economic challenge for Europe as well as globally. A rapid and effective bidirectional transfer of relevant cancer research findings between bench and bedside would play a pivotal role in addressing top-priority needs at the EU level to reduce incidence and mortality of malignancies and to improve the quality of life of cancer patients. The proposed ERA-NET Cofund TRANSCAN-2, in continuity with the preceding and ongoing TRANSCAN ERA-NET, aims at linking translational cancer research funding programmes in 15 Member States, 3 Associated Countries, and a third country. By concentrating transnational resources, TRANSCAN-2 will provide a critical financial and scientific mass for tackling large-scale problems, relevant for improving translational cancer research globally. A co-funded joint transnational call (JTC) will be launched focusing on the topic “Intratumour heterogeneity in resistance to therapy and recurrence” followed by three additional JTCs that will be implemented in a frame of multinational translational cancer research programmes. In addition, strategies will be developed for the enlargement of the network, for improvement of coordination and for an efficient communication and dissemination of the results of the consortium as well as of the research projects funded through the JTCs. The monitoring of the projects funded through the JTCs and the critical assessment of the performance of TRANSCAN-2, based on key indicators, will be also realised.